Hey!!!
So I’m in Garanhuns, which I love! This place is awesome, the weather is great and the nights are cold, and I think the nights are super cold because we live on the top of one of the biggest hills here and our house at the top of a big apartment building, so the wind is super crazy and I wear my pajama pants and hoody to bed every night, It’s weird wearing a hoody in Brazil. Also our apartment is awesome. I feel so spoiled. Our room is nice but we’ve got a huge balcony that is just giant and since we are on a huge hill you can see all of Garanhuns. Its way beautiful and at night as the wind is blowing and its cold we just stand there and look at the huge city and it’s just so peaceful and feels great :)
As for the house, we are way lucky. It’s just Elder Moore and I that live there. Elder Moore has about 1 year and 8 months here in the mission and he spent the last 10 months as the mission financial secretary. Elder Moore was already in this area the first 6 months of his mission so it’s kind of weird for him to be coming back after a year but he is way cool and we get along well. He’s from Texas and is planning on returning to Brazil to marry a Brazilian in Sao Paulo. He has already bought the plane tickets! Dang, Americans stealing Brazilian girls! Its weird speaking English a lot with Elder Moore. We probably shouldn’t, but I kind of miss the good old English language.
Also we live in a ward with about 100 people. They still meet in a big house (like a branch would do) but we found out a couple days ago that the land was just bought by the church to build a church close by for our ward that will have 3 stories! They only make huge churches here now so they can fit more wards in them if the one ward grows too big. The members are all real nice and all super helpful, It’s weird but I feel like I’ve known them all forever. Oh and the relief society president is just the nicest lady ever and reminds me of Grandma Sandra. She’s pretty hyper, cooks great and is always looking to help everyone. So the ward is way good and big, just a lot different than what I’m used to after Sao Jose. Oh, but of course the gospel principles teacher was gone, so at the last minute I decided to teach the gospel principles class. Some things never change no matter what area you are in ;)
As for the weather here it’s great and never really hot like it was in Recife. But, our area is a bunch of huge, huge, huge steep, steep hills! I mean monster hills! So even though the weather is nice we still sweat like crazy going up and down the hills. Hopefully we will get used to that soon like growing some new hill muscles in our legs or something. During the winter, which is summer in the US, it gets pretty cold like in the 20’s F. And during the summer, like right now, it’s pretty normal. Like I said, because of where our house is its way windy and cold in our house. Garanhuns is known for the good weather and flowers so it’s really beautiful here. It reminds me of Pine Top, a cool little town with a city that’s not huge but has everything that you could possibly need, There are even pine trees here... what?!
In Garanhuns there are 3 wards and 3 buildings and 6 elders (2 in each ward). A little outside of the city there are 2 more cities that are also in our zone/stake which have elders (2 in each of those) so all together our zone has 10 elders with 5 wards. Our zone leaders are way cool. Today we are going to play American football, which will be great after playing ping pong every p-day for the last 6 months. I hope I haven’t lost any of my skills!
About the B of M in Russian, I just wanted it to study. I thought it would be cool to study a little Russian on p-days when I want to do something different just for fun. It would be $25 for shipping right? That’s kind of expensive but just send it and I’ll pay for it. Letters will take FOREVER to get to me, like every 3 months I’ll get letters here if I’m here for awhile. Recife is so far away that the zone leaders never go there so we only get letters on transfers or mission conference, so I guess it could be more like every 6 weeks but that will be a bummer.
Also about opening the area is weird because it’s not really like we opened it because there were elders here before us but President Lanius transferred them both out so we both got here not really knowing anything. So the only reason they called it opening an area is because both elders before us are gone and we have to figure out who they were teaching and it’s just all more difficult. I’m not really sure why president would transfer them both but the Lord inspired him to do that so we can’t complain. This week was an animal! We knocked a lot of doors and even bible bashed with and old pastor last night. He and I started to raise our voices talking about why the Sabbath day is on Sunday and not Saturday. I have to admit I totally had him explaining to him how the English to Portuguese translation of the bible makes it confusing for Brazilians and the apostles in the Book of Acts and how Christ fulfilled the law of Moses and a bunch of other good stuff. But, of course bible bashing never converted anyone so we apologized and finished the lesson. It actually ended on a good note and they said they would read (him and his wife) the BOM and pray about it and come to church Sunday! Also, their daughter is sick and has a problem going to sleep at night because she spends all day on Facebook. A lesson for the kids at home.
Things are getting a little more normal here. It’s just weird being in a new place. All is well!
Congratulations Shelby on the b-day! Love you so much!
Glad to hear you all had a great week with the cold weather and all!!
Love you all!!!!
Com amor, Elder LeSueur
Elder LeSueur and Elder Moore’s apartment in Garranhuns (top floor)
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